Casper.Dik at sun.com wrote: >> I think "enable" sets a long-term state, but I think that "start" >> implies a one-time operation. Similarly "disable" and "stop". > > Why should the random event of a reboot cause a system to go back to > disabled state? It does not make a whole lot of sense if you see > reboots as an arbitrary force of nature.
Look at the word you used to describe the state. You didn't say "go back to a stopped state". You said "go back to a disabled state". Looking a desktop environment, when I "start" an application I don't expect that it will come back after I log out and log in. (Perhaps it should, but that would take serious application-level work because it should come back in the same state with zero work lost. Also I'm not even sure that I want it to, because I like that logout/login takes me back to my "base" state.) On the other hand, if I *wanted* it to come back on login, I'd say that I "enabled" that behavior. It's purely a matter of the words and my perceptions of what they mean. I would be happy with not having any "temporary" operations... but if the words "start" and "stop" are used, I think they are immediate, one-time things. This isn't a terribly strong opinion. Just trying to express what I expect when I hear those various words.
